The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais (translated by David Coward).
Title: The Marriage of Figaro (aka The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro).
Author: Pierre Beaumarchais (translated by David Coward).
Genre: Literature, fiction, plays, humour, satire, romance.
Country: France.
Language: French.
Publication Date: 1778.
Summary: Figaro, in the service of the Count for the past three years since he united his master, the Count, with his one true love, is finally ready to settle down and get married. But when the Count, already bored of his wife, starts eyeing Figaro’s bride, and an insistent woman with a surprising origin sets out to blackmail him into marrying her instead, this crafty barber must use all his wiles and schemes to save his marriage. Servant and master are pitted against each other in an exuberant battle of the wits, and the aristocracy itself is at stake!
My rating: 8.5/10.
My review:
♥ SUZANNE. I don't like it.
FIGARO. People usually give a reason...
SUZANNE. What if I don't want to?
FIGARO. The minute women get you in their pocket...
SUZANNE. Having to prove I'm right means admitting that I could be wrong. Are you or aren't you my slave?
♥ SUZANNE. Clever people aren't very bright, are they?
FIGARO. So they say.
SUZANNE. They say it but they don't believe it.
FIGARO. Obviously a mistake.
♥ FIGARO [scratching his head]. The shock's softened my brains. I can feel cuckold's horns sprouting...
SUZANNE. Stop scratching, then.
FIGARO. I'm in no danger, am I?
♥ FIGARO. Give me a kiss to get me started.
SUZANNE. Kiss my lover today? Not likely! What would my husband have to say about that tomorrow?
[FIGARO kisses her
All right, that's enough.
FIGARO. You have no idea how much I love you.
SUZANNE [patting her clothes]. When are you going to stop bothering me by going on about it from morning to night?
FIGARO [winking]. When I can prove it to you from night until morning.
♥ FIGARO. You're not cross, Doctor? People in your line of work can be very hard. Really, you have no more sympathy for poor dumb animals than if they were human beings!
♥ MARCELINE. The Count neglects her. ..It's hard to describe his Lordship. He's a rake and he's jealous.
BARTHOLO. He's a rake because he's bored and he's jealous because he's vain. It's all very straightforward.
♥ BARTHOLO. If it was me he was running after, I'd have stopped him a score of times.
MARCELINE. How?
BARTHOLO. By marrying him.
MARCELINE. A tasteless remark from an unfeeling man! Why don't you use the same solution to stop me bothering you? Don't you owe it to me? Have you forgotten your promises? Have you no memory of our little Emmanuel, fruit of a long-dead love that should have led to marriage?
BARTHOLO [removes his hat]. Did you bring me here all the way from Seville to make me listen to this rubbish? This attack of the matrimonials which you have in an acute form...
MARCELINE. Very well, let's drop the subject. But since it seems that nothing will persuade you to do the right thing and marry me, help me at least to marry someone else.
BARTHOLO. Of course. Consider the subject raised again! But what mortal man abandoned by gods and women...
MARCELINE. But who else could it be, doctor, but handsome, likeable, lovable Figaro?
♥ MARCELINE. Never angry, always cheerful, living happily for the present, and worrying as little about the future as about the past, jaunty, generous, as giving...
BARTHOLO. As a burglar?
MARCELINE. As a lord. He is a charmer. Yet he's an unfeeling monster.
♥ MARCELINE. We women are passionate but timid. We may well be charmed and attracted by pleasure, but the boldest of us is aware of a voice within her which says: be fair if you can and wise if you will, but be wary, you must.
♥ MARCELINE. Oh, how deeply satisfying it would be...
BARTHOLO. To punish a rogue?
MARCELINE. To marry him, Doctor, to marry him!
♥ SUZANNE [curtseys]. Your humble servant, Madame. There's always something deeply unpleasant in everything you say. ..Fortunately, Madame, your jealousy is as much common knowledge as your claims on Figaro are slim.
♥ BAZILE. You go through a simple ceremony, and then what you were forbidden to do yesterday you will be required to do tomorrow.
SUZANNE. Don't be disgusting!
BAZILE. Of all the serious things in life, marriage is the most absurd.
♥ BAZILE. You can lead a horse to water...
FIGARO. Damn, he's off again, the old fool and his venerable proverbs. All right, professor, what has wisdom of the ages to say on the matter? You can lead a horse to water... and?...
BAZILE. And he'll drink if he's thirsty.
♥ COUNTESS [gets up and walks about, fanning herself]. He doesn't love me any more.
SUZANNE. Why is he so jealous, then?
COUNTESS. He's like all husbands, my dear! Simple pride! Ah, I loved him too much. I've bored him with my affection, wearied him with my love. Those are the only wrongs I have done him. But I won't allow your honesty in telling me this to harm your future. You shall marry Figaro.
♥ FIGARO. Again, what could be simpler? You get even with those who upset your plans by spoiling theirs. Everybody does it-and we're going to do it too. There, I think that sums it up. ..Now, if we are to proceed as methodically as his Lordship, first we reduce his enthusiasm for acquiring what belongs to us by making him unsure of his grip on what belongs to him.
♥ FIGARO. If you want to get the better of people like him, you only have to needle them lightly, as you ladies know only too well. Then, when you've made them suitably furious, it only takes some light steering and you can point them in any direction you choose-straight into the Guadalquivir if that's what you want.
♥ SUZANNE. You think it'll work?
FIGARO. Damn it all, listen! People who won't try to make something out of nothing, achieve nothing and are good for nothing. That's my motto.
SUZANNE. Sounds too clever by half.
♥ SUZANNE. You can always count on Figaro when there's a plot afoot.
FIGARO. Two plots, three, four at a time, as involved and tangled as you like. I should have been a politician.
SUZANNE. They say it's not an easy thing to be.
FIGARO. Take, grab, demand: that's the secret of it in three words.
♥ COUNTESS. You want to be forgiven yourself but wont forgive others. Just like a man! If I ever felt I could forgive you because you were misled by the note, I'd insist that everyone involved was forgiven too!
♥ COUNT. We men think we're rather good at politics but really we're only children who play at it. You're the one, Madame, the king should send as his ambassador to London! Have all women put themselves through an advanced course of self-control to be as good at it you are?
COUNTESS. Men leave us no alternative.
SUZANNE. If you'd only treat women like prisoners on parole, you'd soon see if we can be left to do the decent thing.
♥ COUNT. But I want to hear you say once more that you forgive me.
COUNTESS. Did I say I forgave him, Suzanne?
SUZANNE. I didn't hear you, Madame.
COUNT. All right, but won't you say it now?
COUNTESS. Do you think you deserve it, unfeeling man?
COUNT. Yes, because I'm genuinely sorry. ..Rosine, are you really immovable?
COUNTESS. Oh Suzette, I'm so weak! What an example I am to you. [Holding out her hand to the COUNT] After this, no one will ever believe in a woman's fury again.
SUZANNE. Can't be helped, Madame. With men, doesn't it always come down to this in the end?
[The COUNT kisses his wife's hand passionately
♥ COUNT. If I hadn't already been reliably informed that you did, wretch, the guilt written all over your face would prove that you're lying.
FIGARO. If that's so, it's not me that's lying but my face.
♥ COUNT. So you admit knowing all about the letter!
FIGARO. Since her ladyship says I do, Suzanne says I do, and you yourself say I do, then I'd better say I do too-though if I were you, I honestly wouldn't believe a word of what we're saying.
COUNT. You've not got a leg to stand on and still you go on lying! I tell you, I'm beginning to lose my temper.
COUNTESS [laughing]. Oh, poor Figaro! Do you really expect him to tell the truth for once in his life?
♥ FIGARO. Still on the bottle, then?
ANTONIO. If I didn't take a drink, I'd go mad.
COUNTESS. But drinking like this when there's no need...
ANTONIO. Drinking when we're not thirsty and making love all year round, your Ladyship, them's the only things that make us different from the beasts of the field.
♥ COUNTESS. I was so shaken... I couldn't put two ideas together.
SUZANNE. But it was the very opposite, Madame! It made me realize what an advantage moving in high society gives a lady-it teaches her to lie convincingly.
♥ COUNT. What am I saying? The fact is, when you start losing your temper, even the most tightly controlled imagination will run wild, just as it does in dreams.
♥ FIGARO. I was getting changed.
COUNT. Does that take an hour?
FIGARO. It takes as long as it takes.
COUNT. The servants in this house take longer to dress than their masters.
FIGARO. That's because they haven't got servants to help them.
♥ COUNT. Indulge her in every way. I shower her with gifts.
FIGARO. You give her presents, but you're unfaithful. Is a man without bread grateful for butter?
♥ FIGARO. Look, sir, it's not very sensible to turn against a man who has proved his usefulness: you might make a bad valet of him.
COUNT. Why is it that there's always something louche about everything you do?
FIGARO. Because when you start looking for faults, you think everybody is louche.
COUNT. Your reputation is appalling.
FIGARO. Maybe I'm better than my reputation. Do you know many noble lords who could say that?
COUNT. How many times have I seen you set off on the road to fortune and never once stray on the straight and narrow?
FIGARO. That's hardly surprising-it's such a busy road: everyone fighting to get ahead, pushing, shoving, using their elbows and feet, every man for himself and anyone who gets in the way is trampled in the crush. That's what you have to do. Personally, I've given up on it.
♥ COUNT. But with your qualities and brains you cold climb the ladder and end up with an important government post one of these days.
FIGARO. Brains? Climb the ladder? Your Lordship must think I'm stupid. Second-rate and grovelling, that's the thing to be, and then the world's your oyster.
COUNT. All you'd have to do is take a few lessons in politics from me.
FIGARO. I know what politics is.
COUNT. Like you know the key to the English language?
FIGARO. Not that it's anything to boast about. It means pretending you don't know what you do know and knowing what you don't, listening to what you don't understand and not hearing what you do, and especially, claiming you can do more than you have the ability to deliver. More often than not, it means making a great secret of the fact that there are no secrets; locking yourself in your inner sanctum where you sharpen pens and give the impression of being profound and wise, whereas you are, as they say, hollow and shallow; playing a role well or badly; sending spies everywhere and rewarding the traitors; tampering with seals, intercepting letters, and trying to dignify your sordid means by stressing your glorious ends. That's all there is to politics, and you can have me shot if it's not.
COUNT. But what you've defined is intrigue.
FIGARO. Call it politics, intrigue, whatever you want. But since to me the two things are as alike as peas in a pod, I say good luck to whoever has anything to do with either.
♥ COUNT. So, you're hoping to win your case against Marceline?
FIGARO. Surely you don't think I'm wrong to say no to an old maid when your Excellency believes you're entitled to relieve us of all the young ones?
COUNT [laughing]. In court, a judge puts all personal feelings to one side and is concerned only with the law.
FIGARO. Which goes easy on the strong and hard on the weak.
♥ SUZANNE. It's never too late to tell the truth.
♥ COUNT. Why not? In the vast field of intrigue, you must know how to make use of everything, even the vanity of a fool.
♥ MARCELINE. So will it be you who actually tries the case?
BRID'OISON. Why do you think I bought my jer-judgeship?
MARCELINE [sighs]. It's scandalous that public offices are sold.
BRID'OISON. Quite right. It would be far better if they gave them out to us for ner-nothing.
♥ BRID'OISON. Yes, I'm one of the judges. But when you owe money and don't per-pay...
FIGARO. Then you do see, your Worship, that it's the same as if the money had never been owed in the first place.
BRID'OISON. Very possibly. Er!... What did he ser-say?
♥ DOUBLE-MAIN [reads from a paper]. The noble, right noble, and infinitely noble lord Don Pedro George, Hidalgo, Baron de los Altos, y Montes Fieros, y Otros Montes versus Alonzo Calderon, a young playwright. The case concerns a comedy, stillborn, which each party disowns and seeks to have attributed to the other.
COUNT. Both are right. Case dismissed. If they collaborate on another play it is the ruling of this court that, with a view to ensuring that the said work achieves wide success, the noble shall contribute his name and the playwright his talent.
♥ DOUBLE-MAIN [takes a third paper. BARTHOLO and FIGARO rise]. ..Figaro... Christian name not given.
FIGARO. Anonymous.
BRID'OISON. Anonymous? Is there a Saint Aaa-Anonymous?
FIGARO. Yes. My patron saint.
DOUBLE-MAIN [writing]. Versus Anonymous Figaro.
♥ DOUBLE-MAIN [reads]. ..if the court so permits, such a practice being contrary to the custom and usage of this Bench.
FIGARO. Usage, Mr Clerk, is often another name for abusage. Every client with a rudimentary education always has a better grasp of his own case than some floundering lawyer who loves the sound of his own voice, knows everything except the facts, and is no more concerned about ruining his client than about boring the court and putting their worships to sleep. And afterwards he is as pleased with himself as if he'd personally written the oration Pro Murena, Cicero's finest.
♥ MARCELINE. You swore to me that...
BARTHOLO. I didn't know what I was saying. If memories of that sort were legally binding, we'd all be obliged to marry everybody else.
BRID'OISON. And if you think about it, nobody would ever mer-marry anybody.
BARTHOLO. Such unbecoming conduct! Yours was a wayward youth!
♥ FIGARO. The guiltiest have the hardest hearts. 'Twas ever thus.
♥ MARCELINE [passionately]. Unfeeling men, who brand the playthings of your lust with the stigma of your contempt: we are your victims. It's you who should be punished for the mistakes we make in our youth-you and your magistrates, who preen themselves on their right to judge us and, through their culpable negligence, leave us with no honest way of earning a living. Is there any form of employment that's left for poor working girls? Once they had a natural right to the women's fashion trade but now men are being trained to do women's work.
FIGARO. They're even employing soldiers to do embroidery!
MARCELINE [passionately]. Even in the highest ranks of society all that women get from men is condescension and contempt. Women are lured by a show of sham respect into very real slavery. If we have property, the law treats us like children; if we stray, it punishes us as responsible adults. Ah! In all your dealings with us, your attitudes deserve nothing but disgust or pity.
♥ FIGARO. You speak words of wisdom, Mother, and I shall take them to heart. Really, we are such fools. The world's been going round and round for thousands and thousands of years, an ocean of time from which I've fished out thirty footling years that I'll never see again, and you think I'm going to worry about who I owe them to? Too bad if that bothers some people. Spending your life brooding is like having someone pulling on a collar round your neck all the time, like some wretched horse on the tow-path dragging a load upstream, that never rests even when it's halted but goes on straining though its legs have stopped moving. We'll just have to wait and see.
♥ ANTONIO. You don't think I'd give the child of my own sister to a man that's nobody's child?
BRID'OISON. That can't be right, oaf. Everybody is somebody's tcher-child.
♥ FIGARO [aside]. Aah! I think all the morons in Andalusia are lining up to stop my marriage.
♥ BRID'OISON. A bigger fer-fool than this gentleman! People can ser-say that sort of thing to themselves, but... really, the per-people around here aren't very per-polite.
♥ FIGARO. Yesterday, I was what you would call an orphan. Now I have both parents, not as grand as I had convinced myself they would be, I grant you, but good enough for us, for we're not as choosy as rich people are.
♥ FIGARO. Chance performed better than the whole lot of us, my sweet. That's how things work. You strive and plan and propose on the one hand; and on the other, chance disposes. From the empty-bellied conqueror who sets out to gobble up the whole world to the harmless blind man who follows where his dog leads, we are all fortune's playthings. And the blind beggar is often better led and less frustrated in his plans than that other blind fool, for all his retinue of advisers. And that's reckoning without the obliging blind god we call Cupid...
♥ SUZANNE. Tell me the honest truth.
FIGARO. I'm telling you the most honest truth I know.
SUZANNE. Don't give me that. You mean there's more than one kind?
FIGARO. Of course. Ever since people started noticing that in time yesterday's inanity turns into today's wisdom, and that little old lies, planted haphazardly, grow into vast and mighty truths, there have been countless varieties! Truths you know but cannot reveal, for not every truth is suitable for telling. Truths you repeat but don't believe, for not every truth is worth believing. The vows of lovers, the threats of mothers, the pledges of drinkers, the promises of politicians, the businessman's handshake-there's no end to it. There's only one truth that's pure and unadulterated: my love for Suzanne.
♥ FIGARO. Is that your hones truth?
SUZANNE. I'm not like all you clever men. I know only one sort.
FIGARO. And you love me a little?
SUZANNE. A lot.
FIGARO. A lot's not much.
SUZANNE. How do you mean?
FIGARO. You see, where love's concerned, too much is never enough.
SUZANNE. All that's too subtle for me. But I shall love no one but my husband.
FIGARO. If you stay true to that, you'll be a glorious exception to the rule.
♥ COUNT [outraged]. Have we strayed into some kind of farce?
♥ COUNT [aside]. The wedding! Best grin and bear it. What can't be cured must be endured!
♥ FIGARO [steps forward]. When was the last time, sir, you saw the face of a lunatic?
BAZILE. I'm looking at one now, sir.
FIGARO. Since my eyes give such a perfect reflection of yourself, look into them and heed my prediction.
♥ FIGARO. Friends!!
BAZILE. You must be joking!!
FIGARO. Because he composes boring church music?
BAZILE. Because he churns out poems for the newspapers?
FIGARO. Bar-room strummer!
BAZILE. Scribbling hack!
FIGARO. Pedant of the oratorio!
BAZILE. Jockey of the diplomatic bag!
COUNT [seated]. And impudent ruffians the pair of you.
BAZILE. He snipes at me but never hits the target.
FIGARO. That's as maybe. But you're one person I'd never miss.
BAZILE. Going round telling everybody I'm stupid.
FIGARO. I suppose that makes me an echo?
BAZILE. There isn't a singer who, on the strength of my talent, hasn't been cheered.
FIGARO. Jeered.
BAZILE. He's doing it again!
FIGARO. And why not, since it's true? Are you some royal prince who has to be fawned over? Since you can't afford to pay people to lie to you, you have to face the truth, you weevil.
♥ BAZILE. Can you think of anything worse than to have people believe you're the father of a bad lot, a good-for-nothing?
FIGARO. Yes, that people think you are the son of one!
♥ FIGARO. You don't know much about your son if you think I can be put off my stride by female wiles. I defy the most designing woman to pull the wool over my eyes.
MARCELINE. It's always nice to think so. But jealousy, son...
FIGARO. ...is merely the foolish offspring of pride, or a madness of the brain. No, mother, on that subject I have a philosophy which is... unassailable. If some day Suzanne is unfaithful, I forgive her here and now. But she'll have had to work hard at it...
♥ FIGARO. The way we feel dictates the way we speak. Get the steeliest judge to plead his own defence and what does he do? He exploits points of law!
♥ FIGARO. I'm enough of a husband to have a right to be angry. But on the other hand, I'm not sufficiently married yet to rule out the possibility that I might just drop her and marry someone else.
♥ MARCELINE. Ah! Provided our own personal interest does not set us at each other's throats, we poor, oppressed women are more than prepared to rise up and defend ourselves against the whole of the proud, the fearsome, and [laughing] really rather simple-minded male sex!
♥ BARTHOLO. Remember, a man with any sense does not tangle with great lords.
FIGARO. I'll remember.
BARTHOLO. They can always trump your ace because they will pull rank.
FIGARO. They've also got wide sleeves, don't forget. You should also bear in mind that if a man is known to be a doormat, every scoundrel will walk all over him.
♥ FIGARO. You think that because you are a great lord you are a great genius! Nobility, wealth, rank, high position, such things make a man proud. But what did you ever do to earn them? Chose your parents carefully, that's all. Take that away and what have you got? A very average man. Whereas I, by God, was a face in the crowd. I've had to show more skill and brainpower just to stay alive than it's taken to rule all the provinces of Spain for the last hundred years. And you dare cross swords with me!
♥ FIGARO. I weary of tormenting sick horses and, deciding to try my hand at something different, I plunge enthusiastically into the theatre. I might as well have tied a large rock around my neck! I cobble together a verse comedy about the customs of the harem, assuming that, as a Spanish writer, I can say what I like about Mohammed without drawing hostile fire. Next thing, some envoy from God knows where turns up and complains that in my play I have offended the Ottoman empire, Persia, a large slice of the Indian peninsula, the whole of Egypt, and the kingdoms of Barca, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. And so my play sinks without trace, and all to placate a bunch of Muslim princes, not one of whom, as far as I know, can read but who beat the living daylights out of us and say we are 'Christian dogs!' Since they can't stop a man thinking, they take it out on his hide instead.
♥ FIGARO. Since you don't need to know anything about a subject to be able to talk about it, I, who didn't have a penny to my name, compose a Treatise on the value of money and the theory of the net surplus. The next moment, I'm whisked off in an official carriage and watch the drawbridge of a prison being lowered for me. As I'm driven in, I abandon all hope and lose my freedom. [He gets up] Oh, those powerful officials who are here today and gone tomorrow and never stop to think how much grief they cause! If I could get my hands on one of them when his pride has been crushed by some humiliating public disgrace, I'd tell him... I'd say that the nonsense that finds its way into print only matters to the people who would like to ban it; that without the freedom to criticize, praise is meaningless; that only trivial minds are afraid of trifling books.
♥ FIGARO. I'm told that while I've been away, all expenses paid, a free-market principle has taken over Madrid which even extends to the press, and that provided I refrain in my articles from mentioning the government, religion, politics, morality, public figures, influential bodies, opera or any other kind of theatre, and anyone who is somebody, I am free to publish whatever I like-once I've got permission from two or three censors!
♥ FIGARO. I'd come very near to losing hope and giving up, when someone thought of me for a government post. Unfortunately I was admirably qualified for it: they wanted someone who was good with figures, so they appointed a dancer. After that, my only option was stealing. So I became a banker at Faro.
♥ FIGARO. I could have been a success at something, for it began to dawn even on me that if you want to be rich, know-how is far more important than knowledge. But since all the people I knew were lining their pockets while at the same time expecting me to be honest, there was no way I could survive.
♥ FIGARO. I dust down my razors and my strop of stout English leather and then, leaving the delusions to the fools who live by them and my pride by the roadside as baggage too heavy for a man on foot, away I go, barbering from town to town and at last living without a care in the world.
♥ FIGARO. And to reward all I did to give him a wife, he now wants to walk off with mine! Intrigue! High winds, stormy weather! I'm about to step into a deep hole, I'm on the point of marrying my mother, when both my parents turn up, first one then the other. [He stands up as the words come faster] Then everybody starts arguing. It's you, it's him, it's me, no, it's not us, so who is it then? [He sinks on to the seat again] Such a fantastic chain of events! How did it all happen to me? Why those things and not others? Who pointed them in my direction? Having no choice but to travel a road I was not aware I was following, a which I will get off without wanting to, I have strewn it with as many flowers as my good humour has permitted. But when I say my good humour, how can I know if it is any more mine than all the other bits of me, nor what this 'me' is that I keep trying to understand: first, an unformed bundle of indefinable parts, then a puny, weak-brained runt, a dainty frisking animal, a young man with a taste for pleasure and appetites to match, turning his hand to all trades to survive-sometimes master, sometimes servant as chance dictated, ambitious from pride, hard-working from necessity, but always happy to be idle! An orator when it was safe to speak out, a poet in my leisure hours, a musician as the situation required, in love in crazy fits and bursts. I've seen it all, done it all, had it all. Then the bubble burst and I was too disillusioned... Disillusioned! Oh Suzanne, Suzanne, you put me through agony!
♥
[CHERUBIN tries to kiss the COUNTESS. The COUNT steps forward and receives the kiss
COUNTESS [stepping back]. Merciful heavens!
♥ COUNTESS [imitating SUZANNE's voice]. So love...?
COUNT. Ah, love is the tale of a heart and pleasure drives its story. It's pleasure which has brought me here to worship at your feet...
♥ COUNT. I love her a great deal. But after three years, marriage becomes so respectable.
COUNTESS. What did you look for in her?
COUNT [stroking her hand]. What I find in you, my sweet.
COUNTESS. But what exactly?
COUNT. I'm not sure. More variety perhaps, and more spice in our life, a whiff of excitement, for her to say no sometimes, who knows? Wives think that they've done all they need to once they've decided they love us. Once they've said they're in love, deeply in love (supposing they are), they become so endlessly accommodating, so eternally, relentlessly agreeable that one fine evening a man is startled to find he has achieved boredom, not the happiness he was looking for.
COUNTESS [aside]. I never knew!
COUNT. The fact is, Suzanne, I've often thought that if husbands look outside marriage for the pleasures which they don't find inside it, it's because wives don't think enough about how to keep our love alive, how to renew theirs, how to-what's the word?-renovate its pleasures by varying them.
COUNTESS [indignant]. So wives must do it all?
COUNT [laughing]. And husbands nothing? Should we try to change nature? Our function is to catch them; theirs...
COUNTESS. Theirs?
COUNT. ...is to keep us. People forget that.
COUNTESS. I won't.
COUNT. Nor me.
FIGARO [aside]. Nor me.
SUZANNE [aside]. Nor me.
COUNT [taking his wife's hand]. There must be an echo here. Let's keep our voices down. There's no need to worry your pretty head about it. You're exciting and beautiful and made for love! With a touch of contrariness you could be the most tantalizing creature in the world!
♥ SUZANNE [with a slap for each phrase]. I'll give you gong! Its me, Suzanne. This is for being suspicious, this is for wanting to get your own back, for your infidelities, your ruses, your insults, your scheming! Isn't this what they call love? That's what you called it earlier on.
FIGARO [laughs as he straightens up]. Santa Barbara! Yes, it's love. It's wonderful! It's marvellous! Figaro is the happiest man in the world! Wallop away, my sweet, as hard as you like. But when you've turned me black and blue all over, Suzanne, spare a kindly glance for the most fortunate mortal ever walloped by a woman.
SUZANNE. 'Most fortunate mortal'! You two-faced hyena!
♥ SUZANNE. It's you who're the innocent, coming here and falling into a trap which was meant for someone else. Is it our fault if we set out to muzzle a fox and end up catching two?
FIGARO. Who caught the other one?
SUZANNE. His wife.
FIGARO. His wife?
SUZANNE. Yes, his wife.
FIGARO [howls]. Oh Figaro! You should be shot for not seeing it coming! His wife! Women! Of all the sly, underhand, brilliantly clever... And the kisses I heard in the dark...?
SUZANNE. ...were given to her Ladyship.
FIGARO. And who did the page kiss?
SUZANNE [laughing]. His Lordship! ..Ha ha ha! Poor Count! And he went to such trouble!
FIGARO [goes to his knees]. ...to seduce his own lawful wedded wife!
♥ COUNT [furious]. Silence! [Icily, to FIGARO] Now my fine buckeroo, are you going to answer my questions?
FIGARO [coolly]. I suppose so. I can't see anyone with the authority to rule that I don't have to, sir. You're in control here of everything-except yourself.
♥ FIGARO. Are we soldiers to kill and get killed for causes we know nothing of? Personally I like to know what I'm angry about.
♥ COUNT [laughing, to the page]. For someone who's so sensitive, what did you think was so funny about having your jaw punched a while back?>
CHERUBIN [takes one step back and half-draws his sword]/. Me, Colonel? Punched?
FIGARO [comically angry]. It was on my jaw he got punched. That's how our betters hand our justice!
♥ FIGARO. I was poor and people looked down on me. I showed some brains and people hated me. Now, with a pretty wife and money...
BARTHOLO [laughing]. People will rush to be your friend.
FIGARO. They will?
BARTHOLO. I know them.
♥ First verseBAZILE:
Triple dowry, pretty spouse
Essential items for a house.
Of a noble and a beardless page
Only a fool's consumed by jealous rage.
But as the Latin adage once did state,
A clever man is author of his fate
FIGARO. I've always known that. [Sings] Gaudeant bene wealthy.
Second verse. SUZANNE:
If a husband unfaithful be
He will boast and others laugh with glee.
But should it be the wife who strays,
He will ask a judge to make her mend her ways.
It is not fair, it is not just:
I'll tell you why, for tell I must:
Laws are written by the strong,
Laws are written by the strong.
..Fifth verse. COUNT:
Take this wife from out of town:
Who wears grim duty like a crown.
Now no one likes a melancholic
So let's have girls who frolic.
They're like coins or specie and
Fit the pocket of a married man
..Sixth verse. MARCELINE:
All present here know the name of she
Who gave him life and vitality.
The rest's a mystery.
Love's secret and love's history.
FIGARO [completes the verse]:
That secret shows how a son, if bold
Though sired by one who's dull and old,
May yet be worth his weight in gold,
May yet be worth his weight in gold.
Seventh verse.
By the lottery of fate that's birth
Nature makes us king or serf.
Our lot's decreed by luck and chance,
Only wit can make a difference.
Twenty kings may wear a crown,
But death deprives them of their renown,
While Voltaire's name will he forever known,
While Voltaire's name will be forever known.
Eights verse. CHERUBIN:
Woman, who with flighty ways
Casts gloom upon our salad days!
We may throw mud at our wicked tricks,
Yet observe how little of it sticks!
You're like the theatre's fickle pit:
Those who claim most to scold it
Are those who do most to court it,
Are those who do most to court it.
Ninth verse. SUZANNE:
If our play of the Follies of a Day,
Has something serious to say,
It is that folly must have its season
To give a human face to reason.
For nature works with measure
To lead us at her leisure
To do her bidding through our pleasure,
To do her bidding through our pleasure.
Tenth verse. BRID'OISON:
And so our comic course is rer-run.
You ask if there is sense behind the fun?
I believe it paints the hope and fear
Of all who are foregathered here.
When good people are oppressed too long
They kick and shout, for they are ser-strong.
But all will end not in tears but ser-song.
All dance as the curtain falls.